Moral Dilema
by Kizmet
Summary: What if Riley and Angel had met before Buffy told Riley about her exboyfriend.


**A Moral Dilema**

Disclaimer: Characters and Premise are borrowed from the show "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

Last night a lot of what the Initiative has taught me got called into question. I don't know how to deal with this. If what happened last night is any indication then the world isn't nearly as black and white as I had been led to believe. 

Last night my team and I were tracking a new hostile in town, we followed it to the rooftops where we found it fighting against a civilian. The civilian was a pretty well built guy and he was holding his own, didn't seem at all phased by the fact that his opponent looked like he'd stepped out of a nightmare. 

I had my team split up and wait for a clear shot at the hostile. Our weapons are only designed to stun, but if we hit the wrong combatant the demon would probably kill the guy before we could get off another shot. 

Then all of a sudden the fight moves. Both the civilian and the hostile end up plowing right into me before I had a chance to react. The next thing I know I'm going over the side of the building. I remember thinking, "Oh God, I'm going to die!" 

Then there's this snap and I realized that the civilian managed to grab my arm as I went over. The snap is my shoulder popping out of the socket as my weight crashes onto the joint. I was sure that the other guy's arm was in a similar condition but he doesn't let me fall. 

Then the hostile lights into him. Its hands are huge claws and it rips them across my savior's side. 

And that's when my world gets turned upside down, cause when the hostile claws him, my savior's face shifts to that of a demon. 

I didn't know what to think; I just hung there staring into the demon's glowing yellow eyes. 

Meanwhile my team manages to get the hostile under control and my rescuer pulls me back onto the roof. He lets me go and asks if I'm alright, as he steps back from me Forrest gets a good look at his face and fires. 

Normally capturing two hostiles in one night would be incredible, but one of those hostiles saved my life and now he… it, is one of the Initiative's lab rats. How am I supposed to feel about that? 

Maybe I'll talk to Buffy, as unbelievable as it seems she's had a lot more experience with demons than I have. Maybe she can explain why one of those creatures would save a human life. 

============================================================== 

I couldn't talk to Buffy; she's in a panic. An old friend of hers was coming into town, only he never showed up. 

Better than most, Buffy knows what becomes of those who go missing in Sunnydale. I offered to have the Initiative keep an eye out for this guy, but if anything that upset her even more than she already was. 

Even with our secrets out in the open there's still so much I can't understand about Buffy. She's being so secretive about this guy, won't say where he's from, why he came, not even a name. I wonder if he's an old boyfriend? 

============================================================== 

I tried talking to Forrest about the new hostile, we designated him hostile 24, but it didn't bring me any peace of mind. Forrest doesn't want to risk thinking about the hostiles as anything other than dangerous animals. All he'll say is it was probably just a reflexive action, the hostile catching me like that. 

Forrest's wrong. Hostile 24 knew what it was doing when it saved me; it didn't even drop me when the other creature attached it. That wasn't reflex, it was purposeful action. He even asked if I were okay afterwards. 

============================================================== 

I talked to Hostile 24 tonight. Dr Walsh will be furious when she learns what I did, but I had to do this. 

I needed answers and he was the only one I could truly get them from. 

His name is Angel; it's an ironic name for a demon. He's educated, well spoken, and I would never have dreamed he was a demon if I hadn't seen him without the human seeming. 

As strange as it seems I'd swear he was very curious about me, about what kind of person I was. 

He told me he was different from other vampires because he'd been cursed with a soul. 

Hostiles I can deal with, they're just an exotic type of animal, but curses and lost souls aren't in the realm of science. 

He asked me how I could seriously dispute the existence of magic with what was essentially an animated corpse. I explained a few of the Initiative's theories on vampires. Angel laughed at them. 

He asked me to name one other higher order animal that could live without breathing or a pulse. 

Angel told me that vampires really are people who are drained by a vampire then given the vampire's blood to drink in return. The Initiative thought that that was a myth. Angel went on to say that the person dies, their soul is lost and a demon takes over their body and memories. 

I've never met anyone with Angel's certainty of what a soul is, I guess its absence would make things very clear. 

The Initiative always considered vampires to be a sort of parallel development to humans. That their appearance was a camouflage allowing them to hunt more easily. I don't like thinking that the creatures I have been hunting were at sometime human. 

Angel says that it doesn't matter, without a soul the creatures are evil. I'm not used to thinking about evil as a concrete term either, and Angel doesn't know what we do with the hostiles we capture. 

We were told Hostiles are animals acting on instinct, not like us. Angel says they're evil, some of them anyway. He talks about demons as if they were like people, some good, some bad, mostly neutral, it's just more species based with them. 

After talking to him I know that demons aren't just animals anymore, even if everything Angel said was a lie, he's still an intelligent, rational creature. 

Dr. Walsh and her associates have dissected living, well sort of live vampires. They turn to dust when they're killed; it was the only way to study them. It makes me sick to my stomach to think of being with human intelligence and memories being violated that way. I don't care if they are soulless or evil, how are we better? 

The pain inflicted on the beings here is sick and wrong. Buffy kills vampires to protect the human population from them. She fights an honorable war against the darkness. I capture vampires so that beings who were once human can be subjected to cruel and painful tests. 

I'm going to get Angel out of here before they start on him. After that I don't know what I'll do, but I can't be a part of this anymore. 

I hope Buffy is willing to help a vampire with a soul. I doubt I could free him on my own and I can't leave Angel in this nightmare of good intentions gone wrong. 

The End 

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